Screening in Hot SU(2) Gauge Theory and Propagators in 3d Adjoint Higgs model

We investigate the large distance behavior of the electric and magnetic propagators of hot SU(2) gauge theory in different gauges using lattice simulations of the full 4d theory and the effective, dimensionally reduced 3d theory. A comparison of the 3d and 4d data for the propagators suggests that dimensional reduction works surprisingly well down to temperatures T=2 T_c. A detailed study of the volume dependence of magnetic propagators is performed. The electric propagators show exponential decay at large distances in all gauges considered and a possible gauge dependence of the electric screening mass turns out to be statistically insignificant.